Is it possible to make competition irrelevant in a hypercompetitive converging environment? : - A study of mobile content providers’ competitive strategies

Sammanfattning: The telecom industry of today is characterised by hypercompetition, convergence and constant change. The market for mobile services is exploding and new actors are continuously entering the market. The rapid advancements and changes in this industry provide companies with business opportunities as well as challenges due to an increasingly complex environment in terms of competition and technology. Porter’s theories encourage companies to choose whether to focus on differentiation, cost-leadership or focus. The more recent theory, the Blue Ocean Strategy, BOS, is however challenging companies to make competition irrelevant. Instead of stealing market share from competitors and compete in “bloody red oceans”, companies should create new untapped market space, “blue oceans”. This theory is highly relevant in hypercompetitive environments such as the mobile industry. The purpose of this thesis is to create a deeper understanding regarding mobile content providers’ competitive strategies, with focus placed on whether they tend to pursue traditional competitive strategies or blue ocean strategies. The study includes in-depth interviews with the CEOs from five mobile content providers, as well as a questionnaire for visualizing the companies’ strategic profiles illustrated in a strategy canvas. All companies do have an outspoken differentiation focus, and are cost conscious. The fact that the majority is in expansion phase makes cost reductions less apparent and the slimmed cost structure provides further limitations for cost reductions. They can despite this be defined as pursuing value innovation. Partnerships are an essential part in their competitive strategies in order to seize know-how and technological advantages etc. Competition is seen as something positive which promotes the companies’ own business. The companies all tend to strive for creating blue oceans; some do however include more elements from traditional theories. As a conclusion; the threat of competition can be made less relevant by making them even more relevant in a positive way through partnership etc. Keywords: Blue Ocean Strategy, Red Oceans, Competitive strategies, Mobile content providers, Hypercompetition, Convergence, Differentiation, Cost-Cutting strategies, Boundaries, Strategy canvas.